


your name like a song i sing to myself

by behradtarazi



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Mace Windu, Vaapad, technically canon never says it didn't happen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:01:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25432027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/behradtarazi/pseuds/behradtarazi
Summary: Mace has always put his men’s lives above his own, and he is still breathing and Ponds is decidedly not, and there is something horribly, heartbreakingly wrong about that equation.
Relationships: CC-6454 | Ponds/Mace Windu
Comments: 9
Kudos: 93





	your name like a song i sing to myself

The facts of the matter are these: Ponds is dead, and Mace is going to have to live with that.

Mace is going to have to find a way to live with that.

He is nothing if he is not honest with himself. He learned a long, long time ago that the only way to begin to overcome his pain is to name it and understand it, and so Ponds is dead and Mace is just sitting here, hollow and alone, hollow and alone when he shouldn’t be, when he has gotten used to not being, because Ponds is _always_ there by his side, and he thinks, _Alright. I love him._

And that’s -

That’s -

Pause. Rewind. Start again from the very beginning, and this time push through the pain, force logic to control the narrative.

Ponds is dead, and if there is one thing that his troopers know about Mace, it is that he will always put their lives above his own. It is that he values them, completely and fully, and he is logical and unflinching but he also cares. He mounts rescue missions and tends to the wounded and puts his life on the line and, most importantly, he remembers the names of the dead and the names of the living and he honors them both.

Ponds is dead, his body was left to float through space, and Mace went out, cold, wordless, and brought him back. Brought him home.

Mace has always put his men’s lives above his own, and he is still breathing and Ponds is decidedly not, and there is something horribly, heartbreakingly wrong about that equation.

His chest is too tight, suddenly. It’s too hard to breathe, suddenly, like Ponds’ ghost is taking what should be his. He closes his eyes and forces himself to, in and out, in and out, in and out.

He knows war. He knows death. Geonosis is a waking nightmare that will never leave him. He is not a fresh-faced soldier struggling to wrap his head around his first loss. He has a routine for coping, at this point, a perfectly practiced plan. Meditation and memorization, reflecting on what happened, carving the names of the newly dead onto his heart, adding them to the list he repeats again and again every time he thinks that a fight is easy. 

The list grows every day. 

It should be too long for him to remember. He remembers anyways.

But Ponds.

Ponds.

His commander.

His name is harder to say. Harder to add to that Force-forsaken list. His throat catches around the letters, refuses to give them up, keeps them sharp and buried deep within him. It’s something dangerously akin to attachment, selfish in a way he has never let himself be, but the knowledge of that doesn’t change the way his mouth refuses to curve around that single syllable.

He loves a dead man dearly, and Vaapad is trying to swallow him whole.

Vaapad is a dance with the Devil on a good day. It is a dangerous balancing act, and now the scales are tipped, everything suddenly shifted. Mace isn’t sure he’s the same man he was before. Grief does have a way of changing people.

In the glint of his purple blade he sees Ponds’ smile, and he slices through battle droids like air, hums as his kill count climbs higher and higher, relaxed in a way he never is, and -

He forces himself to come back. To sharpen up. To keep himself together. He cannot let go. He will not let go. He will not crumble and give in to the Dark. 

He loves Ponds.

He loves the Republic, too.

He refuses to let one cause harm to the other.

He carries his devotions like stone pieces of his heart, and he is not Atlas. His burden is his love; how could he ever want to escape it? In weak moments, maybe, but there are no weak moments. He is in a war. Vaapad is lurking, waiting for the moment when he is no longer its master, waiting for the moment when it can pull him under.

He is growing tired. His heart aches, staring at a sea of men whose lives lie in his hand. Every once in a while he sees Ponds’ bright gaze staring back at him, but the thought fades as quickly as it comes. None of the troopers look exactly the same. It’s in the subtle differences. The quiet changes.

He knows that better than most. He learned it the hard way, seeing a dead man everywhere. Dead by his hands, exactly as every trooper lost under Mace’s command, though slightly more direct. 

You can’t turn a man into a ghost. Even in a crowd of near-identical faces, when the men themselves wouldn’t say a single word of complaint, Mace can’t turn a man into a ghost. They say being forgotten is the final death, and he wouldn’t wish that on anyone alive. 

Which isn’t to say that it was easy, looking beyond Jango Fett. If Mace has two constant companions, they are anger and guilt. He has spent a lifetime learning how to deal with them, and they still surprise him. They still surprise him.

Ponds used to, too. 

He turned to him once, sitting by a fire on an untamed planet underneath a dark sky, and asked him if he ever saw anything but Jango when he looked at him, and Mace didn’t know exactly what to say, felt clumsy and uncertain in a way he’s always hated.

He’s never been sure how he got the words out, how he managed the soft, “Yes. You’re gentle.”

He didn’t say a lot of things that he could have. That maybe he should have. Like _Your eyes are dark and warm and I’ve never seen anything like it before,_ or _I trust you with everything I have left in me,_ or _I love you._

He didn’t say a lot of things that he could have. He wonders if Ponds would have hated him for it, or if he wouldn’t have, because he remembers -

Mace remembers a lot of things.

He was watching Ponds in the flickering light and Ponds was watching him and he noticed for the very first time that the paint on Ponds’ armor was the very same shade of his own eyes. He noticed the way Ponds opened his mouth to speak, and then stopped, hesitated, like he hadn’t been about to say anything at all, like he was going to do something that they both might end up regretting, like he was going to do something that might be completely worth it, even for only a moment.

Ponds didn’t say anything. Neither did Mace.

He remembers he had liked Ponds’ quiet. It helped with his near-constant headache and the silent presence was comforting, steady.

He doesn’t know if he thinks otherwise, now. If they would have ruined everything by saying anything out loud.

He has never been known for uncertainty. He does not hesitate, every decision he makes cool and confident, supported by shatterpoints and a clear view of right and wrong, good and evil. He has never been known for uncertainty, but Ponds turns his stomach into knots, his mind into shambles. 

A different man might call it love. Mace can call it love. He is a general and people are relying on him and he is painfully selfless, and he also calls it a distraction. A good way to die. A good way to give in.

He pushes it down for days, weeks, months.

Years.

It doesn’t leave.

It never leaves him.

He free falls, lightning in his veins, agony shooting through every inch of him, and Mace is selfish and he does not think about a Sith Lord or the Republic in ruins.

Mace is selfish and he thinks about Ponds.

Mace collapsed once, stumbling out of a crashed troop carrier, injured troopers in his arms. Smoke was filling up his lungs, blood trailing from a gash on his head, and he kept going back again and again for his men, until his legs gave out underneath him and he couldn’t drag himself back to his feet.

Ponds had rushed to his side, then, his touch featherlight on Mace’s face, gentle, cautious. “Don’t move,” he said, wrapping his arms around his general, voice quiet and strong. “Don’t. You’ve done everything you can. Let me take care of you. Let yourself rest.”

Mace closes his eyes.

And the list of his dead rings through his head one last time.


End file.
